'Simpsons' adds another Fox News joke

The Simpsons added an extra joke about Fox News to its latest episode at the last minute.

The show's executive producer Al Jean told The Hollywood Reporter that the team decided to include the gag following criticism from Bill O'Reilly.

O'Reilly had previously complained about an episode which included a Fox helicopter painted with the motto: "Fox News: Not Racist But #1 With Racists". The pilot also yelled: "We're unbalanced! It's not fair!" when the helicopter began to crash.

Following O'Reilly's complaints, another joke about a Fox chopper was included in the show.

"It was inserted late because we did the first joke last week and Bill O'Reilly got upset and called [the characters] 'pinheads'," Jean said. "If you're calling cartoon characters 'pinheads', what does that make you? [Creator] Matt Groening wanted to do a response to O'Reilly so we slipped this in just for the US version. We didn't pay to put it in every edition, which saves the company money that can be funnelled back to Fox News and O'Reilly."

However, Jean suggested that the show will not make any more jokes about Fox helicopters in the near future.

"I think at that point [after two jokes] you're becoming stale," he said. "I believe that something is only funny twice. Next week, the show is so long we don't even have a couch gag."